This dog movie might make you cry

Richard Gere’s latest movie, “Hachi: A Dog’s Story*,” sounds like something that would make a lot of dog owners emotional.

The movie tells the legend of Hachiko, an Akita that always waited at a train station for its master, a professor at the University of Tokyo. Even after the professor died, the dog waited at the station every day for 10 years, until it died in 1935.

People were so moved they built a statue of Hachiko at the station, which remains a popular rendezvous spot for Japanese today.

The story of Hachiko was made into a 1987 Japanese movie. Gere’s version transports that story to a station in Rhode Island.

Gere said the Japanese breed of dogs called Akita used in the movie are close to wild dogs and very difficult to train. In the beginning, Gere was instructed not to even look at the three dogs that played Hachi.

“They only do something because they want to. You can’t really buy them with food,” said Gere, last in Japan four years ago for another remake of a Japanese story, “Shall We Dance?”

Gere said the new film evokes the artistry of silent movies.

Often, the crew would film the dog for 12 hours, and take just 10 minutes to shoot Gere’s segments, he said.

“We were capturing something that was organic and real that was happening between me and the dogs,” he said.